Invincible Iron Man #508

The next couple of posts will be all Marvel, all the time, so Marvelites rejoice! First up is what I've got to believe is the penultimate Fear Itself x-over issue of Iron Man.

Invincible Iron Man #508(Fear Itself tie-in):

Summary: Let's get the Pepper Potts/Sasha Hammer/Grey Gargoyle stuff out of the way first so I can tackle the Tony Stark portion of this comic uninterrupted. Hammer orders her men to attack the Gargoyle against Pepper's warnings since the Gargoyle had already beat the hell out of Iron Man and as such Pepper knew Hammer's mercenaries didn't have a chance at toppling the Gargoyle. Needless to say, the Gargoyle marches through Hammer's men, so Pepper jumps in and tries to buy Hammer's men some time to regroup. Unfortunately for Pepper, once Hammer's men get clear, Hammer orders an immediate retreat(against the wishes of her men, who want to help Pepper for assisting them). As Hammer and her armor-plated goons fly off, Gargoyle rips Pepper's helmet off and stares at her. Pepper figures she was safe as long as she didn't look at the Gargoyle, so the Gargoyle patiently tells her he could wait. As for Tony, he manages to defeat the magic golem that attacked him last issue with the help of his dwarf friends. The dwarfs want to celebrate by drinking, but Tony finally turns the dwarf's drink down. From there we get a replay of the stuff that happened in Fear Itself #6 with Odin arriving to empower the weapons Tony and the dwarfs had created.

Thoughts: This issue was a good read, but there's really not all that much more that can happen in this series without giving away too much in the main Fear Itself comic. For example, we KNOW Tony doesn't lose his armor or his life to the golem here since he had both in Fear Itself #6 when Odin came to visit. So the stuff with Tony really didn't do much for me since it was all a forgone conclusion anyway. As for the parts with Pepper and Hammer, I both liked and didn't like them... I enjoyed Hammer arrogantly having her men attack the Gargoyle since that move fits her character so well, while I really didn't like the scene after the Gargoyle popped off Pepper's helmet... First off, I can't imagine that the Gargoyle managed to make eye contact with EVERY person in Paris... His powers had to have been amplified to have turned the entire city to stone you'd think. Besides that, why the hell does the god who possessed Gargoyle(whatever his wacky Asgardian name is) simply snap Pepper's neck and be done with it? Seriously, why does he HAVE to turn her to stone? Dude, you've proven you could beat up Iron Man WITH his armor on... Why not just pop Pepper's head off and move on? So while I did have a few gripes here and there, for the most part I enjoyed this comic, thus the score you see below.

Score: 8 out of 10.Um, I think there are several ways he could kill you besides simply looking at you, Pepper...